YouTube Afterglow Interruptus

If one of CNN’s goals in soliciting videos from real people was to pull a few more 18-29-year-olds away from their laptops and onto basic cable, they scored. More of the “young” folks watched Monday’s Democratic debate than any other primary debate in cable history. Yes, there’s a few qualifiers in that stat (“primary,” “cable”) and here’s another: CNN says they only started measuring such things in 2000. Still, mission accomplished there, to an extent.

The Pewbies found that only 15 percent of Internet-using adults have watched political videos online, and only two percent do so regularly every day. More than twice as many have watched news online (37 percent.)

However, what those young people do love to do more than watch political videos, god bless ’em, is that they love to laugh. Pew found that 56 percent of 18-29 year-old punks watch comedy videos online, and 43 percent said they watched news videos. The Pews said they really couldn’t parse how those responses translated into “We watch ‘The Daily Show’ online.”

Here’s a way to get even MORE young’uns to watch next time. Instead of asking the campaigns to make videos in a tortured attempt at hipness for the debate, CNN should air unintentionally hilarious political videos like this from Sen. Mike Gravel, where he stares silently into the camera for a minute, then throws a rock into the water. Genius. If you don’t get it, before you reach for a bong hit to try to make sense of this, here’s the explanation from the Senator.